In Muted Modernists: The Struggle Over Divine Politics in Saudi Arabia, Madawi Al-Rasheed challenges monolithic understandings of official and opposition divine politics in Saudi Arabia by examining how activists, intellectuals and religious scholars are attempting to construct a new form of politics through reinterpretation of key Islamic texts and civil society activism. This is an important and insightful read that contributes to scholarship on changing socio-political and cultural dynamics within the Middle East and the influence of media and communication technologies on political participation, writes Philip Effiom Ephraim

Ephraim, Philip Effiom

LSE Research Online

Book Review: Muted Modernists: The Struggle over DivinePolitics in Saudi Arabia by Madawi Al-Rasheedblogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/07/27/book-review-muted-modernists-the-struggle-over-divine-politics-in-saudi-arabia-by-madawi-al-rasheed/In Muted Modernists: The Struggle Over Divine Politics in Saudi Arabia , Madawi Al-Rasheed  challengesmonolithic understandings of official and opposition divine politics in Saudi Arabia by examining how activists,intellectuals and religious scholars are attempting to construct a new form of politics through reinterpretation of keyIslamic texts and civil society activism. This is an important and insightful read that contributes to scholarship onchanging socio-political and cultural dynamics within the Middle East and the influence of media and communicationtechnologies on political participation, writes Philip Effiom Ephraim.Muted Modernists: The Struggle over Divine Politics in Saudi Arabia . Madawi Al-Rasheed. Hurst. 2015.  Find this book: Global events in 2016 are indicative of rapidly rising suspicion towardsMuslims and Arabs in general worldwide. The closure of borders torefugees in Europe, the threat to close borders to all Muslims by a key USpresidential candidate, the BREXIT referendum and the Brussels andIstanbul bombings are among the different events that have been directlylinked to jihadist terrorist activities, and have served to worsen fear andsuspicion. Terrorist attacks cause widespread anger and, in response, thegeneral public can tend to overgeneralise by linking all Muslims withterrorists and other perpetrators of violent acts. Fingers often particularlypoint to Saudi Arabia as the mastermind and main sponsor of terrorism. Inseveral cases, reprisal attacks on innocent members of Saudicommunities in the west have followed, as witnessed during the aftermathof the 9/11 attacks in the US.The framing of news and television programming on terrorist attacks, andindeed life in the Arab world, by the majority of western media oftenfurther aggravates the situation. Western media typically projectsstereotypical images of Saudis as violent bigots, sectarian fanatics,misogynistic preachers and as socially conservative. While some aspectsof these reports are factual, they often lack balance as counter-narrativeson the struggles for freedom and democracy within the Arab world remainlargely absent. Muslims thus tend to be lumped together as commonlyseeking to establish an Islamic state where sharia law and Islamic moral codes prevail.In Muted Modernists: The Struggle Over Divine Politics in Saudi Arabia , Madawi Al-Rasheed turns our attention toevents in a country widely regarded as the seat of Islam. Al-Rasheed critically examines conflicting socio-culturaland political power relations between traditional-fundamentalist Islamists and those termed modernists. Modernists– comprising socio-political activists, intellectuals and ulama (religious scholars) – are attempting to rethink Islamicnorms and reinterpret foundational Islamic texts with a view to aligning them with both the spirit of Islam and thesensibilities of modern society. The modernists call for a rational assessment of Islamic history and the adoption ofcontemporary perspectives and strategies to allow for greater freedom and political representation. By holding thesecounter-perspectives, modernist thinkers are directly pitched against state ideologies.1/3Image Credit: Masjid al-Ḥarām, Mecca, Saudi Arabia, 2009 (Al Jazeera English CC2.0)Across six chapters, Al-Rasheed first discusses the situation prior to and during the 2011 Arab uprisings, stating thatunlike in other Arab states, activists in Saudi Arabia could only resort to using strong petitions due to severerestrictions on public protests. These formal petitions carried democratic impulses, calling for more inclusivemethods of governance and better relations between rulers and the governed. However, the author notes thatduring the same period there were also activists advocating for even stricter Islamic law, thus creating a conflict ofinterests. The author goes on to highlight the immense role that the Saudi Association of Civil and Political Rights(HASM) played during the uprisings. The association mobilised Saudis and organised several online campaigns toadvocate for human rights and the release of prisoners of conscience.The author also discusses the contributions of key Saudi religious scholars, including Sheikh Salman al-Awdah,Muhammad al-Abd al-Karim and Muhammad al-Ahmari, in the movement towards religious and political reform. Shenotes that the changing perspectives of these notable scholars point strongly to serious transformations withinIslam. Islam is a religion which is neither inherently dogmatic nor flexible; instead, the author posits that Islam isactually a form of politics that engages with the divine as well as the messy and profane realities of the world.The title of the book is interestingly ironic, because the modernists described are not ‘mute’. Despite sustainedefforts to silence them, they are becoming increasingly vocal, finding spaces and opportunities to propagate theirideas of freedom and democracy. Accounts presented in the book are indicative of growing movements towardssocio-political and cultural reform in Saudi Arabia. As the author states: ‘increased repression of dissidentmodernists during the Arab uprisings succeeded in putting several of them behind bars after lengthy trials, but theirdiscourse continues to flourish and gather momentum, thanks to the proliferation of social media in Saudi Arabia’(3). Al-Rasheed particularly highlights the use of Twitter and YouTube by the modernists. These served as platformsfor disseminating protest messages and sharing videos before the Arab uprisings (a movement from virtual to realprotest (45)), and are still currently employed in the struggle.The book therefore describes the efforts of resilient men struggling to overcome repressions imposed by anautocratic system in Saudi Arabia. However, Al-Rasheed does acknowledge the absence of female activist voicesas one of the shortcomings of the book. She explains that male and female activists in Saudi Arabia often havediffering objectives. While the men advocate for general socio-political reform, liberally minded women want the2/3freedom to study, work, drive and travel without restrictions. Islamist-minded women want greater focus on areas ofsharia law that grant them rights as defined by Islam. The author notes that female activists’ efforts have also beenseverely opposed by conservative religious leaders who have spoken of ‘the loss of shyness, damage to ovaries,uncovering of the face and spending too much time outside’ if a driving ban were to be lifted, for example (49).For Muted Modernists, Al-Rasheed drew upon a variety of qualitative sources including articles, pamphlets, booksand interview data. Writings of prominent socio-political and religious scholars were consulted to gauge their variousviews on the reinterpretation of Islamic texts. The author also interviewed key activists and intellectuals viatelephone and social media. The author’s choice of the above methods can be understood due to the sensitivenature of investigating socio-political reformist activities within Saudi Arabia. In so doing, the author suggests astrong need for more empirical research on this topic. The book raises several questions: how many reformistgroups currently exist in Saudi Arabia; what is their spread and membership strength; how are people beingimpacted politically and culturally; what percentage of Saudis are open to reform and what percentage arecomfortable with the current status quo; and what are the real agendas of the modernists? Will movement towardspolitical reform in Saudi Arabia lead to a worse conflict than that which is currently being witnessed in Syria? Thesequestions are shaped by the consequences of the Arab uprisings, which saw the destabilisation of several Arabstates.Muted Modernists is a particularly important read during the current times of rising Islamophobia in the west, andindeed worldwide, as Saudis and other Arabs are increasingly viewed as generally lacking a culture of freedom anddemocracy and as incapable of accommodating western cultural ideals of civil and human rights, especially forwomen and minority groups. The book is also timely given growing scholarly interest in the changing socio-politicaland cultural dynamics in the Middle East, particularly in relation to the increasing spread of new media andcommunication technologies which have created new spaces for socio-political participation by previouslymarginalised groups. With the Middle East arguably one of the most discussed regions in global news and in socio-political debates, social science scholars at both undergraduate and graduate levels will find Muted Modernists mostinsightful.Philip Effiom Ephraim is a communications and media consultant. He holds a PhD in Communication and MediaManagement from Girne American University, Cyprus. He worked as an academic technologist and as a lecturer ofpublic relations and marketing communications at Cross River University of Technology, Nigeria. His researchinterests cover both critical and mainstream approaches in communication and media studies. Philip is particularlyinterested in the use of emerging media for socio-political and cultural reform in developing countries.Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of theLondon School of Economics. Copyright 2013 LSE Review of Books3/3

Book review: muted modernists: the struggle over divine politics in Saudi Arabia by Madawi Al-Rasheed

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